Hmm, those clips are utterly unimpressive. This is the kind of thing that makes people doubt that the robotic transformation is really going to happen. They look at those silly pictures of stiff people speaking in a robot voice and they think, "Oh, well, that will never replace real teachers."

Of course it's not going to look anything like that. Computerized voices will only start to be used for serious tasks in a few years, when they start to sound real. It takes just a little bit of vision to imagine yourself into a world of robots that speak with perfect fluidity.

It's two entirely different questions when computerized education will become a good idea, and when it will be adopted by society. Most of the public school system in the US is so terrible that it could easily be replaced with something better, but when it will actually be replaced is a delicate equation, in which the main variables are sadly not the informing and enlightening of young minds but rather the factors of social inertia vs cost efficiency.

I took a trip on Virgin Atlantic recently, and I had a bit of a Robotic Nation moment.

If there is any job that is robot-like, it's being a steward or stewardess. Think about how much pain those poor people go through pushing those carts up and down the aisle and saying over and over "Would you like the turkey or the chicken?"

How brain-numbing is that?

So anyway, obviously those carts will be replaced with some sort of robotic doohickey sooner or later. (Probably before the pilot...)

But there was an even better example -- the mind-numbingly boring security video that no one ever watches was turned into a cartoon. And people watched it -- it was funny. At the end there was a very surreal moment where the cartoon talking heads said where the exits were, and the real stewards and stewardesses stood there and flapped their arms about on command.

The virtual weatherman is kinda cool, but still it requires a person speaking the information. The flash file is faking the mouth movement based on some kind of audio analysis...probably a plug-in that's available for developers. Frankly, I tend not to listen to weathercasters, I just look up the info or stick my head out the window. Quicker and more accurate. ;)